It’s all about grace…all of it.

Steve Brown:
It’s all about grace. All of it. Let’s talk on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. I’m Matthew executive producer for the program and our host is author and seminary professor Steve Brown. The church has suffered under, do more, try harder religion for too long. And Key Life is here to proclaim that Jesus sets the captives free.

Steve Brown:
Thank you, Matthew. If you’re just joining us this week, we’re going through, by looking at the first 10 verses of the book of Galatians, which we’re going to be studying for a long time. I’m going to be your tour director. And I’m going to point out some amazing sites in this book. Uh, but what we’re doing now is we’re looking at some of the basic teaching that Paul repeats over and over again in his ministry. And he does that in the book of Galatians. In fact, Paul does that in most of his letters, he’ll kind of set up the main themes. Every time I say this, uh, our producer is in a little glass booth and I, his name’s Jeremy, and I can see him through the glass booth. And he’s an unbelievable musician. I mean, he plays a bunch of instruments. He’s a worship leader. He directs orchestra. I mean, this guy is really something else. And every time I say that this is like a symphony with a theme set up at the beginning and then are repeated, he holds his thumb up or anything smiles or he or he nods. And that’s exactly what Paul is doing. He’s a composer. And, uh, he’s got a symphony here and we’re looking at some of the main themes that he sets up at the beginning. Now we have seen the theme of truth, absolute revealed, propositional truth. Doesn’t matter what you think about it. If it’s true, it’s true because it’s true. So there, and on another theme of authority and apostleship, we talked a lot about the importance of authority in the Bible. We are called, don’t you hate it, to submit to proper authority. Yeah. Those politicians too. The policemen too. Uh, the emperor, if you’re living in that kind of country too, the Bible is clear about that and more important to God’s anointed leaders. And then let me show you something else. And this shouldn’t surprise you. It’s probably one of the reasons. This is one of my two favorite books in the Bible. He sets up the symphonic theme of grace, Galatians one 1:3, sets it out,

Grace to you and peace from God the father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

That theme of grace is found as the central message of Galatians. And I could show you a bunch of places, but look at Galatians 3:23-24.

Now before faith came, we were confined under the law, kept under restraint until faith should be revealed. So that the law was our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith.

That’s the theme of the reformation, justification by faith alone. The problem is, finding a way to say this, that people can get. I’ve been doing this all my life. I really do get it most of the time. I mean, I revert to the law just like you do on occasion. Sometimes I go on a guilt trip and think I couldn’t be a Christian and think that and do that and be that. But for the most part, I get grace. That God isn’t angry at his own people, but, but it’s hard because everybody says, I get that. I’ve known that since I was a little child, we did a seminar that we taught all over the country. We still use some of that material. It started out as a three day seminar, and then we cut it back to a one day. Cause you can’t get Christians to sit still for three whole days. So we did it in a day. We did it with drama. We did it with Peculiar People, a wonderful drama ministry of some of the most talented people I’ve ever seen. And Buddy Greene, you know about Buddy Greene, he’s an incredible Nashville recording artist. We tried to teach people about grace in various methods, uh, but we had trouble promoting it. You know why? Because when people said I’d like to come to a seminar, what’s it about? And we’d say grace, and they would say, I don’t need that. I know about that. I’ve always known about that. And that was really frustrating. And we wanted to say and did say, no, you don’t, you think you do, grace is so amazing and so powerful. And so counter to everything that we believe about everything else that we just don’t get it. Um, and so. And so we tried our best and I’m still trying to myself and do you to say it in a way that you can hear. My beloved friend Jerry Parries, he’s a pastor in this area has one of those wonderful statements that I think about a lot of the time, he said you will run out of sin, before God runs out of grace. Oh my. And then I’ve quoted 10,000 times to you, Jack. Miller’s comment that the whole Christian faith can be summed up in two sentences. Cheer up, you’re a lot worse than you think you are. And you are. And he said there’s a second sentence. Cheer up, God’s grace is a lot bigger than you think it is. And so Paul is trying to do what I tried to do and what we tried to do in the Born Free Seminar. What he’s doing is that he’s saying in the clearest possible way, God is different than what you think. He likes you. And it’s not because of what you do. You think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Thank you Steve. Steve Brown there continuing to explain the main themes found in Galatians and today, the theme grace. As Steve quoted from Jerry Parries. You will run out of sin before God runs out of grace. If you enjoyed this teaching today, be sure to join us again tomorrow. Cause we are just getting started. Well recently on our other radio show, Steve Brown Etc., we spoke with one of our favorite folks, Dr. Hugh Ross. In Dr. Ross’ new book, it’s called Weather and Climate Change. He introduces some interesting new information that’s sure to make you lean forward, no matter what you believe on the subject, take a listen to an excerpt from that conversation. Then I’ll be right back to tell you about a free offer.

Zach Van Dyke:
Can you explain what has changed in the last three years? Like how do we get new information that, that made that clear?

Hugh Ross:
Well, it’s a group of scientists that basically looked at 74 temperature proxies, because you know, we’ve only had thermometers for the past 150 years. And so what we need is, what the temperature was like for the past several thousand years. And we’ve been relying on polar and Antarctic ice cores to determine the temperature. We now have 73 other tools. And by looking at these 74 proxies and integrating them, we actually get a much more reliable read on what’s been going on. And also we astronomers understand that if you look at what’s happening, naturally, it’s dramatically cooling the planet. And so what’s stopped us from going into a deep ice age, a few thousand years ago was a fact that the climate briefly stabilized thanks to an asteroid hitting in Northwestern Greenland that took this giant asteroid to bring about this period of stability. And then what happened is that we humans launched civilization and the launch of civilization began to warm the surface of the earth and the human activity that was warming the planet, balanced off the natural cooling. And balanced it off so well over the past 8,700 years, the global mean temperature very gradually and steadily declined by only one degree centigrade. But what’s causing this controversy in the last 70 years has jumped up by one degree. So now the temperature is just as warm as it was 8,700 years ago. And of course the concern is that the human civilization technology continues to exponentially increase. We might take it up another degree or two. And what we noticed in looking at the ice age cycle, every time the global mean temperature hit two degrees centigrade above where it is now. We rapidly dropped into an ice age. And for the first time we know why. Because when the global mean temperature rises that high, you melt the summer polar ice cap and that ice cap reflects sunlight with 60% efficiency. But when you take the ice away, it reflects sunlight with only 6% efficiency. So where does all that extra solar heat go? It goes into the Arctic ocean. It makes water vapor and a water vapor will fall as snow on Siberia and Canada. So that’s the enigma global warming will bring on dramatic global cooling. And so it’s in our best interest to delay the melting of a polar ice cap. We’re in this very narrow window, only 9,500 years wide, where we’ve got this extreme climate stability. Or we’re in the middle of an ice age, but also happens to be identical to the very narrow window of the sun. The sun has an extreme stability in it’s luminosity for only a 90,000 year period. And the amazing thing about the past 10,000 years there hasn’t been a single major solar flare. It’s also a window where we’ve had no nearby supernova eruptions. There were plenty during the last ice age, but none during this period of extreme climate stability. And those are three of about 20 narrow time windows that simultaneously line up. And of course I’m arguing, this is no coincidence. This is part of God’s design to enable us to have billions of human beings on the planet. With the civilization of it and the technology that we can take the good news of salvation to all of people groups, not in billions of years, but in only thousands of years.

Matthew Porter:
This is really fascinating stuff. And sure to help you start some interesting conversations of your own. Get the entire episode on a CD for free right now by calling 1-800-KEY-LIFE. That’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also email [email protected] and ask for the CD. If you’d like to mail your request, send it to

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Just ask for your free CD, featuring the conversation with Dr. Hugh Ross. And while we continue to debate whether or not the earth’s temperature is rising, one thing is going up for sure. And that’s the cost of bringing you this show over the radio. That’s why we count on your generous donations. Would you help us? Just charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. Both of those organizations assure financial accountability, and we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.